SAN BERNARDINO – An official with San Bernardino International Airport’s most upscale business paid part of the fees to renew its business license Thursday, but it still wasn’t enough to get a valid license, city officials said Friday.

The amount T. Milford Harrison, a manager at Million Air San Bernardino, paid wasn’t enough to cover late fees and other penalties, City Clerk Rachel Clark said Friday.

Harrison arrived at City Hall shortly before closing Thursday to make the payment, Clark said.

That was hours after The Sun posted a story on its website saying the facility was operating without a business license.

“We went ahead and accepted the partial payment and let them know we’d be invoicing them for the remaining balance,” Clark said.

The city’s business licensing division is overseen by the City Clerk’s office.

Clark said her office has been in regular contact with officials at the upscale refueling facility for private aircraft since its business license expired in April. Million Air, the most high-profile business operating at the embattled airport, has been operating without a license, a violation of its lease agreement, for nearly 10 months.

“It wasn’t like we were sitting around waiting for them to comply. We had been trying to get a hold of them,” Clark said.

A notice of violation has been prepared for Million Air franchisee Scot Spencer, who is expected to receive the notice on Monday, said A.J. Wilson, interim director of San Bernardino International Airport.

Once Spencer receives the notice, he will have 30 days to pay the remaining fees and renew his business license, otherwise face eviction, Wilson said.

“We don’t have the ability to shut them down, but we have the ability to take away their facilities,” Wilson said.

Spencer entered into a 10-year lease agreement with Million Air, a Houston-based corporation with 30 franchises across the continental U.S., Alaska and Canada, in 2007. SBD Properties LLC., one of 16 companies tied to Spencer and under investigation by the FBI, owns the lease.